Acts 6:1-7

The Choosing of the Seven
1 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews[a] among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. 2 So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. 3 Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”
5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. 6 They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

7 So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.


Dig Deeper
Quite a few years ago, my wife and I had the privilege of knowing a great young couple of disciples of Jesus Christ who were getting married. They were certainly full of zeal and excitement both about following Jesus and about being married to one another. One thing that was almost a little amusing, but at the same time a little concerning, was a belief that they seemed to have developed that they were not going to have any conflict or problems once they got married. They had read several marriage books, had received much advice from other married couples, and had observed the lives of many wonderfully mature Christian married couples and they were absolutely sure that they had it all figured out. They were not going to fall into all of those traps that so many others had. As idealistic as they were, though, I have to give them a bit of a break. I don’t think any engaged couple on their way to be married can really grasp just how challenging living together can be and how much it demands of you.

The reality of life is that if you put two or more people together to live together or to closely share their lives in any sort of context, there will be conflict. It really is that simple. In fact, many young Christians make the same mistake as that soon-to-be-married couple, who incidentally found out that married life wasn’t quite as simple as they thought. They come to the body of believers almost thinking that things should be perfect. This seems to be a perfect group of people and they will always be loved and have their needs met perfectly. That’s just not the reality of the present age, however. Yes, the Christian family is called to anticipate the life of the new creation that is to come but not to fully and perfectly live it out. Luke understood that as he recorded the book of Acts and we have to give him credit for never trying to idealize the early church. They had conflict and issues for certain. But the mark of God’s people is not the absence of conflict, it is the loyalty and commitment to one another because of their love for God despite the conflict. It is not that the Christian family won’t have issues, it is how they work through those issues that shows their love and dedication to God. That’s what Luke wants us to see in this passage.

Luke has already shown us, beginning in chapter 2, how the early Christian community included Jews from “every nation under heaven.” This included Jews that had lived in Israel their whole life and those who had returned to Jerusalem after living all around the known world as a result of the Diaspora that spread Jews out throughout the world centuries earlier. This was an early symbol and anticipation of the gospel family that was to finally be the fulfillment of God’s promised one family of all nations that would soon go out beyond the borders of Israel and include Gentiles of all nations. But putting together these Hellenistic Jews (those who would have likely returned to Israel after living elsewhere and who would have primarily spoke Greek along with other languages) with the Hebraic Jews (those who were indigenous to Jerusalem and the surrounding area of Israel and who would have primarily spoken Aramaic at the time), was not without it’s difficulties. Taking disparate groups of people and calling them to live together as a common family (they were not living communally but had certainly intertwined their lives as a single, large family) was going to bring conflict. This too would be an anticipation of the coming time when the Gentiles would begin to stream into the family of God and conflicts would quickly arise, primarily between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.

As many Jews that had been scattered from Israel in previous centuries returned to Jerusalem in their older age to live out their remaining years in the homeland, it left a situation where many of the Hellenistic Jews were widows whose husbands had already passed on. The Jews had a system for taking care of widows, the most vulnerable among them, but these Grecian Jews may not have had the same community system around them as the Jews who grew up in Jerusalem, and it seems apparent that because so many Hellenistic Jews had returned in their advanced years that there was this unusually high number of widows among the Hellenistic Jews. In any case, however, when Jews of any stripe joined the Christian family they knew that this typically meant leaving their blood families and possibly their normal system of care. If the Christian group of believers was going to truly act like the family that God had called them to be, then they would have to provide for those who could not generally provide for themselves, the widows among them.

As mentioned earlier, many young Christians come to the table expecting perfection from the other believers and sincerely believing that they will never be hurt or have conflict within this new family but even a quick perusal of the New Testament should strip someone of any such utopian beliefs. Yet, there are many older Christians who somehow still cling to this belief and who become outraged, pull away in their heart, or even quit the Christian community if anything unpleasant happens. What is often missed, though, is that the New Testament virtually promises that we will have conflict and that we will hurt one another or let one another down. When a passage urges Christians to bear with one another, or be patient with one another, or forgive one another, these are promises of conflict and hurt within the Christian family.

Quite frankly, this was a small issue but it had potential to rip this young Christian family apart. Nothing can be more divisive in a group like this than fault lines that run along old lines of race or nationality. These people had been called to be a new humanity. They were called to be God’s family, the people that would live out the reality of the light of the new creation while still in the darkness of the present age. They were supposed to show the world what it looked like to live by the values of a future age when their would be nothing but love and the presence of God. But now the reality of human shortcoming and the difficulty of organizing a group to live like family that was exploding in numbers and getting larger everyday. They were certainly trying to live out the ideal of sharing everything they had in common and care for every member of the family, but the Hellenistic Jews felt that their widows were somehow being overlooked in this matter. Perhaps they tended to live in one area and that area was somehow being unintentionally neglected. Luke doesn’t give us the details but they are not the point. The point is how was this burgeoning community was going to deal with such a potential earthquake that could split them along nationalistic lines and destroy the very thing that they were to become; one family of all nations.

The apostles were in the clear leadership position of the community but they were just human. They could not do all of this by themselves and they admitted as much. They were not succeeding in overseeing the distribution of foods as they had other roles that needed to be fulfilled, namely prayer and the ministry of the word, and they were in danger of coming up short in those areas if they continued to oversee matters that could be delegated. The solution was to find capable men that were willing to serve and who were known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom in making decisions. The tasks of the Christian community were not to be distributed to make people feel good about themselves. They were to go to people who had proven themselves capable of such an important task.

The apostles decided to leave this decision to the whole group. It’s not that they could not have chosen the men, but they likely felt that they needed to leave the believers to work out this issue among themselves so that they could learn to work out their common life. The entire community of believers did something that appears to be rather amazing. The seven men that they chose all have Greek names. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all seven were Hellenistic Jews but most commentators feel that this was the case. This means that the whole community of Hebraic and Hellenistic Jews chose men from the overlooked minority to oversee the future distribution of foods. There would be no splitting along group lines, no bitter arguments over equal representation between Hellenistic and Hebraic Jews. The whole group trusted one another despite their differences and difficulties and believed that God really had called them to live together as one family. They knew that having separate groups of people worshiping with only those like them made no statement to the world at all. It was only when different groups of people that had no other reason to live together as a single family chose to do so despite their difficulties because of their love for and loyalty to God, that the manifold wisdom of God was truly displayed for the whole world to see (see Eph. 2 and 3, especially 3:10). The whole community did something that was simply stunning. How many times have you heard of a conflict arising between two groups and then both groups coming together to choose a group made entirely of the neglected minority to lead things? Yet this is what they apparently did. They presented the men to the apostles who confirmed the decision and laid hands and prayed for them.

As a result of their continued loyalty to one another, the community continued to grow rather than fracture. Luke gives the specific detail that as it continued to explode in numbers, a large number of priests came to join the Christian family. This likely would not have included the inner circle of wealthy chief priests who had vehemently opposed the gospel. The priests referred to were likely the large group of ordinary priests like Zechariah (Lk. 1:5-6) who were humble to God’s truth and waiting for the Messiah. These men heard the truth of the gospel and accepted it, not being dissuaded by their priestly position but embracing the truth simply because it was true.

The Christian community had faced their first potential divisive conflict but it would not be their last. They would continue to work through what it meant to be loyal to God by loving their brothers and sisters in Christ (1 Jn. 4:12, 19-21). The challenge for us today is not to try to create communities that are devoid of conflict but to live in communities that loyal to God and one another despite the conflicts. It is when the church truly embraces that as part of our vocation that the world sits up and takes notice.


Devotional Thought
What is your response when their is conflict in the Christian community or when you feel that you have been wronged? Is it to pull away or to deal with situations that anyone in the world might? Or is your reaction to continue to step forward and love one another and put loyalty to God above potential conflicts? When another brother or sister in Christ offends or hurts you, do you pull away from them or step towards them in love? How does a passage like Luke 6:27-37 challenge us in this area?